Internship Field Reports

As far as work/tasks are concerned, my last week was focused mainly on finance. The other part time finance intern had left while I was on vacation and right after he left all the account reconciliations came in. Surprisingly, it was not all that difficult. The operating account, our checking account and largest account, reconciled pretty painlessly. I completed it easier and quicker than I or my supervisor expected, that was quite swell.

One day we took a field trip into North Philly to see a boat that my student outreach supervisor, Alice, had worked on before she became full time at LiveArts. Alice, myself and three other staff members went over. The boat was beautiful. It was a 42 ft schooner that was going to be for Alice’s friend’s parents’ retirement (too many apostrophes). After they build it, they plan to tow it up to Cape May (or thereabouts) and then sail it to Norway. That is so awesome to me. We got to climb all around in the hull and see all the steps that went into building what had been finished so far, it was really great.

On Thursday the office went out for food and drinks to send off the 3 interns who were leaving at the end of the week. After dinner some of the office went to see our distribution manager debut some of her art, I was tired so I thanked everyone and went home. The next morning I received some bad news.  My student outreach supervisor, Alice, when biking home from the art debut, was hit by a car running a red light on JFK boulevard and was in a coma. That work day was very surreal for me. I kept trying to picture her lying motionless on a hospital bed but I just couldn’t. It was in such opposition to her lively, charged personality that, in a way, I couldn’t believe it. It was a very difficult day for everyone but we were all hopeful. Alice is still in a coma, the doctors are waiting for her to be more stable to move her and get a a catscan of her brain to see where the fluids are and what their plan of action should be. Her family has been at the hospital, surrounded by everyone who loved Alice. I remain hopeful as I’ve always been that she will recover and I’ll be able to visit her when I go back to see some shows in late September.

Although my last day was a very sad day, my internship was amazing. I learned so much about arts organizations and, most importantly, what I’m passionate about. I got helpful advice from everyone in the office and I made some great friendships as well. I had one of the best summers of my life and I’ll be more prepared for my courses this fall. Thanks professor for all your help this summer, I can’t wait for Opening Nights!

This week we began phase 2 of office construction. We wanted to put a sink in our kitchenette as well as a bathroom in the studio so we needed water lines to each of those places. Instead of paying a plumber for 4 days of work, Nick decided that we could run the lines ourselves and just have a plumber connect the pipes and pay him for just 1 day of work. This came at a great time for me because I was getting a little bored of office work. Our office is on the first floor and the water source is in the basement, so step one was finding a way to get the pipes from the basement up to our office. Originally we wanted to drill through the concrete floor to run the pipes through, however, we hit multiple snags. We determined the floor must have been made of multiple levels of concrete because once we broke through one level we hit another seemingly impenetrable level. Many hours and a few bits later we decided to resort to plan b. There was a large pipe running from the basement up through our floor and on up to the other floors in the building. Since the pipe was now serving no purpose, a plumber has suggested that we cut the pipe and thread the PEX water tubing through it. Instead of cutting the entire pipe we decided that just 2 large holes in the pipe would suffice, one hole in the basement and one on our floor. Using a 1/2 inch metal cutting bit we got to work only to realize that we would need to drill about 40 holes to get large enough holes in the pipe for the PEX to run through. Luckily Nick’s neighbor is the suburban equivalent of Home Depot so the next day he came in with a jig saw with metal cutting blades. This worked very well upstairs where we were cutting from a seated position only about 3 feet off the ground. Downstairs we has to stand on buckets to reach the pipe which was about 10 ft off the ground and running obnoxiously close to the ceiling. The pipe’s location and the design of the jig saw kept us from getting a large enough hole in the pipe in the basement so we decided that a sawzal with metal cutting blades was the way to go. For those of you who are unfamiliar, a sawzal is no more than a mechanized saw. Instead of doing the back and forth motions yourself, you hold down a trigger and a motor in the saw moves the blade itself. In short, sawzal’s are wonderful and it did the trick. Today, we threaded the .75″ wide PEX through the 4″ wide pipe made of some absurdly strong metal with room to spare. In the end, had we started with the sawzal the whole process would not have taken over an hour. Instead, with our trial by fire method, it took 3 days. But hey, at least it saved us money and I got to use power tools.

This week we held a student workshop and Meet the Artist event for Fatebook, a LiveArts festival show put on by New Paradise Laboratories. Fatebook is a show meant to delve into what presence has come to mean in a 21st century world where social networking is king. The task before this theatre company is incredibly daunting because I feel that there are many more questions being asked by this show than the actors and the director are aware of.

Fatebook is a show set in in “real space” just as much as it is in cyber space. Instead of traditional face-to-face auditions, the actors and actresses submitted audition tapes to the director through Youtube. Once selected, the actors and actresses began rehearsing with their characters not in a theatre, but online on, you guessed it, facebook (and twitter). Using fake email addresses, the director, Whit, created facebook accounts for all the characters and let the actors and actresses mingle with one another using social networking sites. They were told to post something everyday and let loose into cyberspace. Those not cast in the show are encouraged to participate as well, in fact, they must. Anyone desiring to participate can receive a fake email just like the actors and submerge themselves in the fatebook world. The audience is given unprecedented interaction with the characters. More than mere observers they become part of the story, in essence becoming part-time writers of the fatebook script. All of this is allowed to build up unmolested until the “real space” performance in September where the characters all attend a party and the story ensues.

The performance is actually set in the studio space adjacent to our office and so it has been very interesting to see their progress. Whit and his team have suspended many large screens from the ceiling, onto which will be projected images and videos during the performance to exaggerate (or blur) the line between the characters in cyberspace and the characters in real space. That is the show as I understand it and it amazes me while baffling me at the same time.

The show invites the characters to come home with the actors, sits them at the same desk at the actors, and lets them type on the same keyboard as the actors. Moreover, it gives the actors MUCH more liberty in the development of their characters. Rather than interpreting their characters based upon a script, the actors create the script along with the audience. That’s another thing. The audience is not longer defined as the neat bunch of people inhabiting the velvet-covered seats in the theater, the audience can be ANYONE and they no longer have to settle for being mere observers of the play before them. I think that some of these things have been given little attention by New Paradise Laboratories. One of the largest dangers, insofar as they are dangerous, that I forsee are the actors using their own lives to sculpt their characters’. For instance, bob plays bill on fatebook. Today, bob does something for the first time and carries the emotion he felt doing that thing, if not the thing itself, into the life of bill on facebook. Bob’s life has just influenced bill’s and bob is none the wiser. Although, it must be said that actors, even great actors are never completely separated from their character, the nature of Fateook makes this a greater concern.

I could continue but I think you catch my drift. This show is both interesting and perplexing and I’m very curious to see how it turns out.

I would like to use this post to talk about another person that I work with, her name is Robin and she is our Director of Marketing. She is a very intelligent woman who has shown her stripes as a cunning marketing strategist on multiple occasions, however, I have found her inter-office relations most remarkable.

Despite her demanding workload, she always takes the time to acknowledge the individual accomplishments of the other people in the office. When it was her intern’s last day, she held a going away dinner for her at a local Mexican restaurant and paid for her food and drinks. When it was her co-worker’s birthday, she took it upon herself to make sure a card got signed by everyone in the office and then gathered everyone together to present it to the birthday girl. Yesterday, to celebrate our festival guide going to print, Robin held a lunch party for her co-worker in charge of the guide to thank him for all of his work he put into it (which is a lot). On top of that, although I’ve only known her for these 7 weeks, she has also invited me to her 30th birthday party, an invitation I was very flattered to receive.

Although I have yet to take a business course at Richmond, I have a feeling that there isn’t a class that touches on this topic, or, if there is, it is taught instead of performed. I think that this is one of the most important qualities a person in the business world can possess because everything is about networking and interpersonal relations. These occasions have shown me that the way a person treats their family is the same way they should treat their co-workers–frequently reminding them through small (and large) gestures that they are appreciated. You can dumb this down and say by doing so you will benefit in the end because what goes around comes around, but that is making what should be a self-less act, selfish. Instead, a person should strive to do this simply because it is the right thing to do. I have a feeling that this will be one of the most important things I take away from this summer.

My financial work contains many difficulties which I never foresaw. I had bought into the idea that accounting was tedious but not difficult. How hard could it be to keep track of credits and debits and make sure everything balanced? I was a little naive.

Working with Quickbooks, I have gathered that what I have to do by computer now does not hold a candle to what as required before computers. I’ve imagined stacks upon stacks of ledgers and a man in wire-framed glasses pouring over the books long into the night just trying to get things to add up. I can’t help but harbor disdain for civilization at times for taking exchange, an otherwise simple process, and successfully mucking it up almost beyond comprehension (speaking for myself). Seriously, checks and credit cards have distanced people so far from their money that some people write checks and make charges with money they don’t even have simply because they can all because people don’t want to carry around large amounts of cash or because they enjoy the comfort of buying something NOW instead of waiting until they get the money. I’m not going to lie and say that I haven’t done this, but it really hasn’t been until now that I realized how much we have pampered ourselves in respect to money. Much of this rant can probably be attributed to credit card reconciliation angst, but be that as it may, we have probably made dealing with money a more complicated process than it has to be. I won’t deny the benefits of credit cards, they allow businesses to borrow money for the sake of future growth, but it also makes me wonder if there has ever been an enterprise that has been profitable enough that it was self-sustaining–meaning it did not have to rely on banks or private investors for loans and instead was able to pay for everything upfront in cash themselves. That would be a sight.

Although it is difficult, it is still very interesting and I know the skills I’m developing now will help me later in life. I have realized that I may be the only business major that has a sharp distaste for money.

A couple years ago, LAF (LiveArts Festival) began holding “Meet the Artist” events in the months preceding the festival to drum up excitement for the shows. On Tuesday of this week the 2009 LAF show Welcome to Yuba City from the Pig Iron Theatre Company held its Meet the Artist event at 7 pm at the Arts Bank of the University of the Arts and I was fortunate enough to attend.

Pig Iron is considered LAF’s sibling. Each were founded around the same time and for as long as there has been a Philly LiveArts Festival, a Pig Iron work has been featured.

Before the Meet the Artist event, Pig Iron held a workshop for college-aged people on physical acting, specifically the 7 levels of tension that exist between people. After distributing flyers and posters in center city for a few hours, another intern and I stopped by to observe the workshop. Not only did it feel good to get off our feet, but I was also surprisingly engaged in the workshop though I was simply lounging on a couch in the corner. The workshop dissected human movement and thought into seven different categories. Each category was given about 15 minutes of exploration time by the participants, requiring them to devote their bodies and their minds to the specified level of tension for that amount of time. For instance, one of the most fascinating levels for me was the “economical” level, in which the participant’s actions were deliberate, devoid of emotion and without waste. The droid-like participants would march about the room sitting, standing, jumping, pointing–each action carried out exactly how it was intended. Economical people do not let their arms sway as they walk, instead they remain motionless to maximize their efficiency. The participants reached their pinnacle at the 7th level where they invited their bodies to be so overcome with love for their partner that they froze in sheer euphoria. As I stated, the workshop was fascinating, I learned a lot.

That night the Meet the Artist event for Welcome to Yuba City was held and it was hilarious. I was surprised to learn that the show to be debuted in September was not actually written yet. Some of the actors were finishing up performances for other productions in Europe and so only preliminary work had been done. Like the workshop, the preview focused on movement and how subtle motions could convey powerful, and often hilarious, messages and emotions. Much of the event was improvised which led to great energy between the performers and many impromptu comedic quips. After the preview I was able to talk with the director of Pig Iron which was a great way to cap off an exciting, albeit tiring, day.

Link to workshop photos:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114907520129#/album.php?aid=88794&id=40016687453

Link to Meet the Artist event photos:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114907520129#/album.php?aid=85538&id=40016687453

One of the most memorable things from last week was,  actually, a building.

Early in the week one of my supervisors, a fellow intern and I set off to drop off a sign and some flyers at another arts non-profit located north of us called In Liquid. Originally, we planned to drive over using phillycarshare, but due to a problem getting into the car we reserved, we decided to hoof it to our destination. We headed to a building called the Crane Arts Building which was home to many art and design companies in Philly.We could see the building from far off as it was a rather tall building in an otherwise flat landscape. Alice, my supervisor, told me that it used to be used as a factory that manufactured, you guessed it, cranes. I was already intrigued. The building was oddly shaped, growing wider as the connecting streets on either side of it diverged. I didn’t know what to expect when I walked in, I was more than pleasantly surprised. The owners had artfully preserved the rustic nature of the factory, including old-time industrial elevators scattered throughout the building.

Alice led us into a large, blank, white room known as the Icebox Theatre, a popular venue for LiveArts performances. That room was amazing. It felt so empty but could easily be envisioned with a complete set and audience inside its walls. The transformability of that space was undeniable. As we meandered through the halls and peaked in various artists’ galleries, I became more and more spellboun/

I went back later in the week to pick the sign back up and saw even more of the building than I had the first time I went. Although they’re awesome to look at, I still haven’t mustered enough courage to take a ride in one. I’m so glad I was able to explore such an awesome space.

On Thursday I began my first office internship duties. It is one of these duties that I would like to discuss.

LiveArts conducts an annual giving campaign to encourage loyal patrons and past donors to donate to the festival so that they can continue to showcase great art. The last campaign grossed around $20,000 and the one before that earned $13,000. This year, one of the staff persons suggested adding a more personal touch to the letter by having more staff persons than Nick and the Development Director sign the letters. This idea was embraced in hopes that it would encourage more donations in these tough times. However, while some of the staff signed their own signatures, most of them were signed by the interns, including myself. As we signed and stuffed envelopes, myself and the other interns joked about the ethics of what we were doing. One of the interns joked that her conscience would not let her forge the signatures, so she folded, stuffed and sealed instead. Another intern said that if she found out that the signatures were not signed by their actual bearers, she wouldn’t feel angry or misled, she would just wish that it hadn’t been done in the first place. While I would probably harbor a tinge of disappointment, I agree with this sentiment. Had I been in charge of the campaign, I would have encouraged everyone to sign their own signatures and had the interns only fold, stuff, seal and stamp. In attempts to assuage our concerns, the Devleopment Director told us about a time when she had turned in a grant application at the last minute which contained all the necessary documents except for Nick’s signature. By this time Nick had already left for home and would not be able to return in time to sign the document before the deadline. So, thinking on her feet, she said that Nick had actually dropped her off and so she went outside, forged the signature and turned in the application. In a storybook ending, we ended up getting the grant.  Joking with the interns, I mentioned that I wouldn’t know which outcome to prefer, not getting the grant or getting it and having to live with the guilt.

It’s difficult to label anyone a victim in this circumstance as that grant certainly allowed LiveArts to commission great international artists to come to showcase their work for ticketholders. However, it was obtained through dishonest means, raising the question, “Is it ok to break a rule (or the law) if good comes from doing so?” I don’t want to get into a discertation on ethics here, I just wanted to mention this occurance as it stuck with me at the end of the week and into the weekend.

As the construction war drew on and the final day of my internship drew closer, Nick would say “we’ll eventually get you doing some actual internship work.” However, over lunch one day, Nick put everything in picture for me. He said that as a non-profit, money was not in abundant supply. Thus, funds for the move were especially at a premium. He said that my help allowed him to pay $2,000 for the renovations, instead of $10,000 if he hired contractors. Thus, my help with the renovations, indirectly opened up more doors for the festival in commissioning artists, booking spaces, marketing and paying the festival staff which dramatically increases as September draws nearer.

In the business section of the NY times, I read an interview with Dany Levy, the founder and manager of an internet company focused on shopping and culture called DailyCandy.com. Ms. Levy said that one of the keys of effective managing was the “criticism sandwich.” She said that when giving criticism to an employee, first start with a layer of praise, then give the constructive criticism, and then end with more praise. This stuck with me all week as a watched how Nick and other employees gave criticism in the office. I noticed that at LiveArts, the layers did not immediately follow one another. Instead, if someone got great news, accomplished something noteworthy, or exhibited notable effort, they would receive office-wide praise. This way, if criticism was ever given to an employee, they knew that, despite the criticism, their work and effort was still noticed and appreciate. I thought this was great and incredibly effective.

My first day got off to a slightly rocky start. I had contacted my supervisor weeks prior to set my start date, but we never discussed what time. To top it off, LiveArts was moving their offices the exact day I began-May 18. Thus, I was not all that surprised when I showed up to an empty office at 9am. So, I walked to the new office and was eventually buzzed into the lobby by another tenant, LiveArts staff were still nowhere to be found. I waited in the lobby and until I saw what I thought was a familiar face go into an office door with a verizon technician. I followed and was greatly relieved to shake hands with, who turned out to be, producing director and co-founder of Philly LiveArts & Philly Fringe, Nick Stuccio.

I worked with Nick that day remodeling a room that was to be used as a workplace for the interns and as a meeting room for the board. Over the next couple weeks I laid cement, hung sheetrock and tape-and-spackled the seams. Everyone was pitching in to help with the move so that was my way to lend a hand. In conversation with Nick I found out he lived close to my house and, because of this, often drove me home after working late on the remodeling. One day he asked me what my future aspirations were and I told him that I was very interested in non-profit management. I asked him what it was like for him on a day-to-day basis as the director and founder of an arts non-profit. He told me it was all about people, knowing what they pursue and enjoy and playing off of those interests. This included his own emlpoyees. When he needed something done, he didn’t simply give an order. Instead, he gave it as more of a helpful suggestion which doesn’t sound like a very big deal, but the difference is great. The most impressive thing I learned about Nick was that he was not a trained businessman. He went to Skidmore where he fell in love with ballet. Upon graduation, he auditioned for the Pennsylvania Ballet Company, made it, and danced for 10 years before co-founding LiveArts & Fringe. The gives further evidence to a claim made by Richmond alum and founder of College Humor, Josh Abramson who stated that business is not learned in the classroom, it’s learned the field. While I agree with Abramson, I also believe the benefits of a solid foundation in business are invaluable.